The Tower We Raised for Dad’s Sunday Net

Two O’Clock

At two o’clock exactly, Dad leaned toward the microphone. He reached out and tapped it twice with his fingertip. Tap. Tap.

I had seen him do that every Sunday of my life, and I never once asked him why. I found out later. On the ship, before he sent a message, he would tap the key twice to settle his hand. He never stopped doing it.

Then he pressed the button and gave his call sign, the letters and the number he has said every Sunday for nineteen years.

“This is the Sunday net,” he said. His voice was steady. “Anybody on frequency?”

He let go of the button. The speaker hissed. Nothing. Dad waited, his thumb resting on the button. The robins hopped across the grass. Somewhere down the road a dog barked once.

I held my breath. I thought, if nobody answers, if this was all for nothing, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Then the speaker crackled.

“Emmerich.” It was a man’s voice, old and dry and coming from very far away. “This is Orrin in Maine. Where in the Sam Hill have you been?”

Dad put his hand over his mouth. He sat like that for a moment. Then he took his hand away and pressed the button.

“Orrin,” he said. “I’m here. I’m at my daughter’s. I had a little trouble with the tower.”

“A little trouble,” Orrin said. “I’ve been sitting here since one-thirty, you old goat, with my coffee going cold. I had a feeling about this week. Don’t ask me why.”

“I’m here now,” Dad said.

Then the speaker crackled again, and it was Texas. And then Ohio, a man with a cough who said, “Thank God, Emmerich, I thought you’d gone and died on us.” Then Oregon, faint and wavering, the signal coming and going. Then Florida, last, laughing.

All five. They checked in one by one, the way they had for nineteen years. Each one said his call sign and his name and where he was and that he was still here.

Dad answered every one by name. His voice did not shake once. His hands did. I stood behind him with my hand on his shoulder and cried without making a sound. Through the kitchen window I could see Florentine at the sink, not washing anything, just standing there with her hands in the water, listening.

When they had all checked in, Orrin came back on.

“Emmerich,” he said. “Who took your tower down?”

Dad was quiet for a moment.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “My daughter and her husband put up a new one. Forty foot. A Navy man couldn’t ask for better.”

“That’s a good daughter,” Orrin said.

“That’s the best daughter,” Dad said, and he reached back without turning around and found my hand on his shoulder and held it.

They talked for an hour. About the knees and the grandson in the Navy and a ballgame and a hailstorm in Texas. About a chief petty officer they all hated in 1963 and a liberty port none of them could remember the name of. They laughed so hard at one point that Oregon dropped out and had to call back in.

At three, Dad signed off the way he always does.

“This is the Sunday net, closing. Same time next week. Fair winds, boys.”

And five old men across the country said, “Fair winds, Emmerich.”